Page 69 of Second Song

“Since I was seventeen.”

“What’s that, six years?”

I nod.

“And are you the same person six years later?”

I shake my head.

“Me neither.” He keeps advancing, planks creaking under his weight. That danger doesn’t stop him. “Back then, I didn’t have tinnitus. Could hear perfectly without all this constant bullshit background chatter. The only bullshit chatter was mine, taking the piss each time Twins One and Two settled in for a TV session in the mess. Six years later, do you know what I regret most about those evenings with Benji and Blake?”

He keeps advancing while speaking.

All I hear is static and a final sentence.

“That you sang, and I missed my one chance to really hear you.”

I run again then, into his arms, and planks don’t only creak, they splinter, but at least we fall together.

27

ROWAN

That falling sensation lingers in a good way—in the best way—and the week is over before I know it.

At least I don’t have to dread it suddenly being Friday, even if Liam isn’t here to start the half-term break with me. I focus on us having seven more days in the same location when he’s back tomorrow. And if he needs to call in reinforcements to get all his work done?

I’ll face whatever happens.

Besides, saying words like scared and coward aloud has unlatched something inside me. I’ve spent the last two evenings rewriting what I started in a sculpture garden. Not on that long roll of paper. This time I’ve followed Luke’s original order to get it out however works best for me.

Write a letter, he’d said. Or a song. Barring one hazy section, I’ve made decent progress, and that progress gives me real hope of meeting Luke’s decision deadline. It also inspires my last session with the children.

We work together for hours, almost up to home time, and this final performance draws attention to our outdoor classroom. Even Luke leans out of his window in a way that Liam would glare at if he saw me do it, only Luke isn’t playing a stupid game. He’s leaning out to hear his son sing.

Perhaps he understands each word of Arabic that Hadi melds with English. I hurry to ask when he comes downstairs to join us, and who would have guessed that I’d ever run towards a headmaster? It’s enough of a head trip that I let this slip. “You know headteachers are meant to be stern, right?”

“Why? Mine wasn’t.” He gestures at a building I first saw as imposing, as challenging, like every task I’ve been set here. So far, each one has come with a soft landing, like Luke’s gaze, which returns to his son, who sings while marching along his plank bridge as if it doesn’t scare him. “Where did his lyrics come from?”

“Hadi’s? Mostly from his friends.”

Now I wonder if my idea for this session was a good one. Charles had thought so. I still can’t help second-guessing. “I asked them all to draw self-portraits. They took turns to lie down on big sheets of paper and then drew around each other.”

“Collaborative and creative. Solomon will be impressed when he gets back.” His next glance lands on the car park like he’d summon a missing minibus holding his art master if he could. He settles for whipping out his phone, capturing some of his son’s performance the same way Teo did by videoing my picnic-bench drum solo. “Nathan will love this.”

“He’ll be back tomorrow?” Part of me is happy for Luke. I focus on that, not the part of me that knows I won’t be needed long term once he’s back in this classroom, working alongside Charles.

“Hopefully.” He presses Send. “It’s been a long six weeks.” Luke sighs as if he wishes tomorrow would come sooner, but he also clasps my shoulder. “You’ve been such a help to us.” He pauses. I know what he waits for, and maybe he can tell that I’m closer, if not quite there yet. He doesn’t push for my trauma-training decision. “So, what’s the musical connection to the self-portraits?”

“Friendship.”

Teo’s been an almost six-week-long example of this process. I can’t help tracing the outline of my phone in my pocket, aware that it holds yet another message from a school that has all the tech he could ever wish for, but where I found none of the friendships that have made a real difference for him lately.

He isn’t the same kid as when I got here. I’m not the same person either, like Liam suggested, and here’s another example—I explain a project I’ve planned from start to finish without caring who watched me. “I asked all the children to visit each other’s portrait and add a word or two of their own. Something they thought about each other.”

“Oh?” Luke sucks his teeth. “You didn’t think that was risky?”

That could sound like judgement. Now I stand by my decisions. “Because they might hear something negative about themselves? We role-played that before we got started.” Those emotion cards keep coming in useful. “I showed them what being mean to someone looks like.” Fuck knows there are enough images of me modelling that on social media. Search the right hashtag and it’s right there on the face of a miserable stranger, a kid out of their depth and cornered. That means I can say this with conviction. “And I showed them what feeling hurt looked like.” I can still feel Maisie’s tight, fierce cuddle as soon as she saw my old wariness and worry.

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